[dokugaku]

Last night someone stole my eBay account! It was working fine the entire day until around 8 pm when I tried to get into My eBay page and it told me to sign in and I couldn't sign in with my password. I thought I typed it wrong, but I typed it carefully again a couple of times and it still didn't work! I was so worried and scared. I immediately went to check my email and I got all these ebay notices of messages that I sent to all these members that I didn't know. I opened them and saw that each message that the person that stole my account had sent to other people were exactly the same:

Hi friend:
We are the import and export company,we have done our busieness for a long time,we main sell our goods to Europe,North America and Australia and so on,we import many models of the goods from the Manufactories to suit for the different countries.we can send our goods to many countries and we can do the dropshipping to send the goods to your custoemers directly.please have a look at our webiste < www.cieieg.com >,if you are interested in something,please tell us,we will tell you the detail.
website: <www.cieieg.com >
MSN: cieieg@msn.com
Hotmail: cieieg@hotmail.com

I was LIVID with anger and panic of course so I went on eBay live chat immediately to see what to do. What if they placed bids on things that I didn't intend on bidding on or hack into my paypal account and use my cc? I was so scared! Anyhow, the ebay people were great and really fast about stopping my account and helping me reset my password so that I can use it again after they confirmed that they were really talking to the real me. So everything is fine now, but I wake up today and see replies from those people that got this spam msg from me and they were really angry and mean! I realize that they are pissed that someone that isn't interested in their auction is wasting their time by sending them stupid spam but it really wasn't me! I'm just feeling really sad about this. The eBay personnel told me that they would send emails to all the people that the hacker sent msgs to to apologize and tell them that my account was hacked and the person sending those msgs wasn't me. Seems like it didn't work. Sigh...

How can these people have so much time on their hands to hack people's account to send all these dumb things?! Anyways, I'm just glad its over (it was the first and hopefully the LAST time that this happens). I downloaded the Account Guard thing the eBay people recommended just in case.

Just a heads up to you girls. Luckily I don't sell anything--I just buy, so I won't be loosing any potential customers. You girls should really becareful now, so you can learn from my experience.

[My Purse Addiction]

Wow- that's horrible! I'm glad you were able to get eBay's help in resolving this. I wonder if these hacker people actually have anybody respond positively to those messages them send. I received a message like this the other day and reported it to ebay. I'm sorry this happened to you!

[zippie]

OH, I'm sorry this happened to you that is horrible. Don't feel bad it will all work out in the end.

[lorihmatthews]

I feel your pain. My account was hacked once and the only reason I found out was because I was getting emails from people asking about the 4-wheeler I was selling. Um, I didn't even own a 4-wheeler! Thankfully, eBay fixed everything quickly and it ended fine.

[Jahpson]

My goodness! thanks for telling us!! Im usually a buyer as well, but that is scary

[cascherping]

That's scary! Thank god it all worked out!

[sweetneet]

wow! how freaky!

to avoid these things in the future, *never* follow links from emails that tell you to "login" to eBay or confirm your password or what not. that's usually how accounts get hacked...you get a fake email pretending to be ebay, you follow the link and "login" with your username and password, and boom, they have your login & password and can do whatever they want. if you're ever unsure whether the email was legit or not, just type in a bogus password with your username. if it doesn't complain, it's a fake!

[babyshingo]

how can that happen? so sorry to hear about that

[southbeach]

That happened to me once as well. Sounds like your account was "phished". Sweetneet gives EXCELLENT advice, follow it to the letter!

[lovemyangels]

This made me change my password to a more complicated one immediately. Please make sure your PayPal password is secure too!

[peppy]

Originally Posted by sweetneet

wow! how freaky!

to avoid these things in the future, *never* follow links from emails that tell you to "login" to eBay or confirm your password or what not. that's usually how accounts get hacked...you get a fake email pretending to be ebay, you follow the link and "login" with your username and password, and boom, they have your login & password and can do whatever they want. if you're ever unsure whether the email was legit or not, just type in a bogus password with your username. if it doesn't complain, it's a fake!

I'd never thought of that!

[Shopstomuch]

I had this happen to me. Got an email saying something about my eBay account needing a response on something and I stupidly hit the link button and typed in my pw. The second I hit that last key of my pw it hit me what was going on. Just for some reason at that very second when I hit that enter button, I knew. As fast as my fat fingers could move I quickly changed my pw as fast as possible and in that few minutes they had cancelled bids on my auctions and were sending offers to the ppl who had already bid. I have my pw stored using a password program now that encrypts everything and so if I do ever become stupid enough to just follow a link then if this thing does not enter my pw for me then I know it's a fake.

[spacytracy]

that creeps me out. I change my password for eBay and paypal often but I make sure that at no time are they the same password. That way if ebay gets hacked, they can't get into my paypal too.

[sea0fyears]

I clicked the link just to see what it was.. their web page almost gave me a seizure!

[dokugaku]

Thanks for all the kind words! No one responded kindly to those spam msgs and I don't blame them. I was just kinda sad seeing them because I just wanted to scream that it wasn't me!

The eBay live chat personnel also said I was, as southbeach said, "pshised". I'm not really a super buyer on ebay (I only have 22 feedbacks) so I had no idea what she was talking about. In my case, it wasn't the fake email thing. I never responded or clicked on to any emails ebay sends me. The only thing that I do do is click reply or something to email a seller (directly to her email) so I can ask them stuff.

Anyway, that "pshised" or whatever is NOT email related. It's actually a fake WEBPAGE. So what the eBay person told me was that I was redirected (without me knowing of course) to a fake ebay website that looked exactly the same with the same url address showing (you know the address box on your browser where you type in what page you wanna go to?). So I was totally freaked out obviously, cuz she said even if I type the url I want to go to myself, I could get redirected anyways. I'm really not a super savvy computer person, so I never even knew those stupid scammers/hackers can do this!

So the only way to know is by dling that eBay toolbar thing (at least that's what the ebay live chat helper told me). Theres this tab at the top called "Account Guard" and whenever you're on an ebay related site that is verifed by ebay (so this is the REAL ebay) it lights up green. If its a fake one then it lights up red. SO SCARY!!!! So its probably a good idea to dl that toolbar.

So really, I just want to warn you guys, since many tPfers buy designer things online, I just get a bit nervous... Now I'm a bit turned off eBay, sad to say because of this and another incident where one of my friends got ripped off on a set of fake MAC brushes--but that's a whole other story.